Flipkart & Snapdeal founders invest about Rs 1.8 crore in designer of board games MadRat Games

The games are priced at Rs 500 to Rs 1,000 and are available in 400 stores in 10 cities — and on Flipkart and Snapdeal.BENGALURU: It’s not much by way of investment — about Rs 1.8 crore in MadRat Games. But it does mark an unexpected meeting of minds, with the founders of ecommerce rivals Flipkart and Snapdeal both having funded the designer of board games for children. Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal of Flipkart made their investment in November while Snapdeal’s Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal did so recently.

“They (the other investors) started smiling when I told them both Snapdeal and Flipkart are participating. ‘How did you manage that?’ was their first question,” said CEO Rajat Dhariwal.

The ecommerce founding pairs didn’t have any issues over their counterparts investing in the firm, said Dhariwal, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay and Carnegie Mellon University.

Participants in the funding round of about $1 million (about Rs 6.2 crore) included the founders of IT outsourcing firm GlobalLogic –Rajul Garg, Sanjay Singh, Manoj Agarwala and Tarun Upadhyay. Vikas Choudhury, promoter of Pivot Ventures, investment banker Sandeep Bordia and equity crowdfunding site Globevestor have also put money into the company.

“Innovation is at the heart of MadRat Games,” said Binny Bansal, the single largest investor in the round. The company has Ravi Vora, CEO of the strategic brands group at Flipkart, on its board. Snapdeal said it won’t be able to comment on the personal investments of the founders. Dhariwal suggested that investors see potential in MadRat.

“Everyone is building brands in-house. In the kids category, I think the two companies see us as a top brand,” he said. The company, which will launch a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter in August as part of efforts to go global, is looking to compete with the likes of global giants Hasbro and Mattel.

Dhariwal taught kids for four years at Rishi Valley School in Andhra Pradesh along with cofounder Madhumita Halder before setting up MadRat in 2010. Their experience showed them that children learn best when lessons are not forced down their throats.

To ensure seamless learning, MadRat sought to introduce a twist to traditional board games by extending their lifespan, bundling more games into one.

For instance, a jigsaw puzzle is usually discarded after being solved a few times. MadRat has sought to build on this, adding card games based on the pictures in the jigsaw or getting players to hunt for tiny characters hidden in the puzzle with a magnifying glass.

“What we found promising in MadRat was the team’s sharp focus on becoming ‘the’ brand known for providing wholesome entertainment for kids,” said Rajul Garg.

The games are priced at Rs 500 to Rs 1,000 and are available in 400 stores in 10 cities — and on Flipkart and Snapdeal. The company said it has sold 60,000 units of the five games it launched in January.

“Learning should be like osmosis. It should happen without them (kids) knowing about it,” said Dhariwal. The market is large, with the Indian toy industry expected to expand to Rs 13,000 crore in 2015 from Rs 8,000 crore in 2013, according to a report by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham).